In office environment, there exists many different sizes of document, and the documents are generally complied into files or books, which are stored in a desk or a cabinet.
Although private companies tend to use papers of sizes A4 or A3, government and municipal offices generally use papers of size B in a relatively large number according to regulations. As a result, there exists in many offices a mixture of papers of sizes A and B, causing a huge problem in storing and managing documents.
Due to these inconveniences, there is an ongoing plan by administration offices to unify the size of documents, so that any newly drawn documents will be standardized into unified sizes based on a new rule.
However, when copying, already written original documents that have been stored in size B (for example B5) with a copier, it would still end up being copied on recording paper of size B5. Unless the documents are photocopied in enlargement or reduction.
On the other hand, there are some copiers that have the ability to distinguish the sizes of the documents, and automatically feed the right size of the paper from the paper feed cassette; however, it is difficult to perfectly copy to recording paper having a standard size, for example A4. Also, in case of the copiers without this kind of ability, but with a plurality of paper feed cassette for recording paper of varieties of sizes, the users are apt to select recording paper having the same size as the original documents, which makes it difficult to make copies on recording paper of a unified size.
Therefore, in order to surely standardize the size of papers in offices, it is necessary to use a copier which could only install the specified size of the paper.
Conventional types of copiers that can automatically unify the sizes of recording papers include, for instance, the "Size unification apparatus in digital copier" disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 179662/1988, and the "Copying apparatus" disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 219852/1989.
Assuming that there exists a copier in which only a unified (A4) size of recording paper can be set, if a manuscript of size B5 is put on a manuscript stand and copied as usual in size A4 paper using this type of copier, the image would be recorded on the A4 paper, but copying is executed according to a positioning sequence for copying a B5 size manuscript on B5 size recording paper, and for this reason, the image is not copied at a correct position on the recording paper.
In a case where a reference position for positioning a manuscript is provided at an edge of a manuscript stand (contact glass) as shown in FIG. 9A, if a size B5 manuscript 902 is placed for copying on a manuscript stand 901, an image 904 (an image of the size B5 manuscript) is recorded on size A4 recording paper 903 as shown in FIG. 9B, so that layout of the image 904 against the recording paper 903 is not balanced.
Also, as in FIG. 10A, where a marker is positioned in the center of a corner of the manuscript stand, if a size B5 paper 1002 is placed on the stand 1001, an image 1004 (image of size B5 manuscript) is recorded on size A4 recording paper 1003. In this case, the appearance is better as compared to that shown in FIG. 9B, but still layout of the image 1004 against the recording paper 103 is not balanced.
If a user decides to recopy the documents after altering their positions on the manuscript stand, it would cause a waste of sources and time.
On the other hand, if a user decides to use the copying apparatus disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication 179662/1988 or 219852/1989, no matter what size of paper the document is, one would be able to copy on the unified size of papers; however, there are disadvantages caused by enlargement/reduction of images that are done automatically by the apparatus above, for example, the image information would be altered as a result of changed sizes of letters.